What remains unquestioned is that it is a fantastic dessert. And it’s fairly simple to prepare, the only real critical part is the precise time in the oven, which depends on temperature and cake size (so it might not turn out entirely perfect the first time you do it…). I used to make moeulleux au chocolate quite frequently, but for some reason I haven’t done it in a while. This time I decided to only use excellent chocolate and see if it’s worth it.

Ingredients

Preparation

Carefully melt the chocolate with the butter (e.g. in the microwave at moderate power. Stir a little in between). Mix sugar and eggs and mix them using a handheld electric mixer at high speed until the mixture becomes foamy and gains considerable volume. The air bubbles you introduce at this point will later expand during baking and make the cake rise. So mix in more bubbles for a lighter texture, and less bubbles for a denser texture3. Carefully fold in the molten chocolate-butter mixture and then the flour and pinch of salt. Fill into small baking pans such as muffin pans. Cool in fridge for 30-60 minutes. Pre-heat oven to 200°C and bake the cakes for 7-9 minutes (depending on size and the real temperature in your oven, just try it out). Let cool for a minute or so and place on plates or wherever you want to place them. No time to loose now. Eat.

Preparing moelleux au chocoalt with Original beans “Cru Virunga 70%”

As done here, it’s a very simple recipe. Starting from here with the idea of a rich chocolate cake with a delicious liquid inside, many variations exist and things can of course always be done more sophisticated4.

Footnotes

Apparently, Jean-Georges Vonrichten claimed to having invented it in 1987, but many (mainly French) sources indicated that it already existed in France for years by this point, such as thisthis or this. [↩]

Many recipes will call for more sugar, typically 100-120g, but I simply like it less sweet and a bit darker. [↩]

If you want to have an even lighter texture, you have two simple possibilities. You can add a little baking powder together with the flour, or you only cream the egg yolks with the sugar and beat the egg whites into a stable foam (that’s then more like angel cake). [↩]